Carter Wrenn posted on October 15, 2009 15:16
Last January Governor Perdue decided to climb out on a limb and appointed a health care lobbyist, Lanier Cansler, head of state health care programs.
Of course, Secretary Cansler came into office with a welter of conflicts of interest. His old clients – like the Nursing Home Association – do business with his department. His old lobbying partner works with a firm getting contracts from Cansler’s department. His wife’s firm lobbies for Pharma, which just defeated legislation that would have saved taxpayers $84 million by having NC Medicaid use generic instead of name brand drugs.
So, given all these cross currents, giving Secretary Cansler the authority to pass out no bid contracts shouldn’t have looked like a good idea.
But no bid contracts was one of the first things Secretary Cansler had on his mind after he took office and the legislature went along, giving him the authority to hand out a quarter of a billion dollars in contracts without asking for a single bid.
Now why on earth would the legislature do that? Well, Secretary Cansler explained that granting no bid contracts was quicker, which meant he could implement his plans to save the state money immediately – which happens to be exactly what the folks at DMI (who’re now part of a criminal probe) told legislators a year ago when they wanted to give a $35 million no bid contract to Verizon.
In other words, legislators fell for the same line twice – so now Secretary Cansler, a former health care lobbyist, is going to be passing out no bid contracts – and that’s another example of how government works.